Susannah Grant
Summer is here, the hydrangeas are in full dove-white bloom and love is in the air. According to the National Statistics Institute (INE), weddings in Spain were up more than 20% in 2022 compared to the previous year.
Although the overall picture is less rosy as those figures are still a whopping 45% down on recorded nuptials in 1975. However, despite a downward trend, Spain hosts around 180,000 weddings per year and increasingly, many of those are between couples where either at least one half is from overseas.
Like me, three of my siblings successfully navigated the convoluted Spanish paperwork to make our marriage legal in this country. I was living in London at the time of our wedding and had to google my nearest catholic priest in order to apply for a dispensation to marry in a catholic church near Aranjuez.
I am eternally grateful to Father Paddy for his painstaking form-filling duties and guidance. My brother, Alasdair shipped out his own Army chaplain from his Territorial Army regiment whilst both my sisters opted for a civil ceremony. Alasdair runs a beautiful hotel in the province of Teruel and was brave enough to contemplate a March nuptials to coincide with the blossom season.
Unfortunately, a week-long storm had blown most of it off the branches so we were left trying to glue it back on for the table decorations. Minutes before the sit-down lunch, an inquisitive Ibex goat decided to explore the marquee before beating a hasty retreat through one of the plastic windows and ripping a gargantuan hole in it. It´s always worth taking out insurance for every eventuality. I wonder if the meerkats from comparethemarket.com cover natural wildlife damage.
To be fair, things had already started to go awry when Alasdair´s bride had to convince the London Metropolitan police that she was prepared to enter her flat in Bermondsey to collect her wedding dress and suitcase at her own risk. Apparently, they were had cordoned off the area after detecting an unexploded WWII bomb. From then on arrangements escalated into a full-scale Monty Python shambles.
The following day, having ironed out the creases, my sister-in-law boarded my brother´s car in her snow-white finery in the remote Aragonese countryside. After 50 metres the car spluttered its last breath, ejecting the 3 toddler bridesmaids in pristine pumps onto a muddy track. As everyone had already left for the wedding venue, frantic phone calls had to be made to recall one of the guests to the rescue. Later on, the happy couple had as much trouble leaving their wedding as arriving for it due to a faulty petrol gauge which left them stranded by the road en route to the first hotel of their honeymoon.
Years later, my sister´s wedding in Teruel was thrown awry by a French airstrike which left many guests stranded near Barcelona. Two of my parents’ septuagenarian friends spent the night curled up in their car outside their boutique Teruel hotel as they failed to rouse anyone to answer the doorbell at 3 am. To this day, Lucinda is still puzzled by the mystery of which Cinderella left their shoe behind after a night of dancing.
Dancing was a major theme at my own wedding. The British Consulate recommended a “caller” who was able to guide the Spanish (and the British) guests through many an energetic Dashing White Sargeant or Eightsome reel. Predictably, the Spanish were a lot better than it than most of the Londoners, especially when well lubricated with whisky and coke.
Debbie Skyrme has been officiating at weddings in Spain for 5 years after having worked as a registrar in the UK since 2005. Originally from Hereford and now resident near Nerja, Debbie married 28 different nationalities in 2023 alone. This year a significant proportion of her 67 bookings are also from overseas. Her eyes light up as she tells me that elopements are a big trend these days. I was picturing 16-year-old brides sneaking off to the equivalent of Las Vegas or Gretna Green but apparently nowadays this can just refer to couples of all ages who tie the knot in private before having a bigger party back home. Spain is a hot wedding destination for this private type of wedding.
“This is the most intimate public act these couples will ever participate in” says Debbie. Apparently, professional wedding content creators are all the rage; they re-create the whole experience on social media, guests can then witness the intimate ceremony afterwards at leisure. Despite Debbie´s scrupulous eye for detail and decades of experience she still has to expect the unexpected. “I´ve had champagne corks popping into the bride´s cleavage, ants climbing up the bride´s dress and the odd drone crash landing in a swimming pool.”
Last month I had to prise my husband and children off the dance floor at 3 am from yet another Spanish family wedding. The last bus was leaving at 4.30 am but my dancing feet were turning into blistered pumpkins by 2.30. Three nephews’/nieces’ weddings down, only 18 more to go if they all get to the altar…..I will have to contemplate dancing Cossack-style on arthritic knees in the middle of a circle of nimble in-laws until well into my 70’s….As the saying goes, “If you can´t beat them….”.
